Pros

Cons

Occasional beta performance issues.

Some features (like links to password-changing web pages) not yet fully implemented.

Bottom Line

Even in its first public beta, it's clear that Mojave is the best macOS upgrade in years, with dozens of new conveniences for managing documents and media files, an elegant new Dark Mode, and better security and privacy protection.

9 Feb 2019

macOS Mojave 10.14 is an excellent upgrade, with dozens of new conveniences for managing documents and media files, iOS-style apps for Stocks, News, and Voice Memos, and increased security and privacy protections. Mojave deepens integration with mobile devices, so now you can even paste a picture into a document on your Mac simply by taking a photo on a phone running iOS 12. Unlike any previous upgrade, Mojave gives you an option to change the whole look of macOS by turning on the new Dark Mode. This mode displays white text on a dark background in the Finder and apps, and lets you work on your document without bright-colored distractions from the app and the operating system that you're working in. Dark Mode is one of many enhancements in Mojave that help you pay more attention to your work—or play—and less attention to the computer itself.

The QuickLook previewer—the preview image that pops up when you select a file and press the space bar—also adds features that let you focus more on documents and images and less on apps. QuickLook now displays larger images than before, and it displays one or more icons that launch a new feature called Quick Actions. Quick Actions can create or combine PDFs from images, or trim audio and video files, without opening the file in a separate application. I hoped that QuickLook might also let me select text from a document and copy it to the clipboard, but Apple still hasn't added that feature, which is available in Windows 10's File Explorer preview. The Finder gets a new Stacks feature that cleans up your desktop by combining icons into stacks of images, screenshots, documents, PDFs, Zip archives, and so on. You can scroll through a stack by swiping with the trackpad or mouse.

The first incremental update after Mojave's initial release, version 10.14.1, added support for Group FaceTime, but that proved something of a fiasco when a teenager discovered a major security flaw in the feature. That update also included 70 fun new emoji, and Apple has subsequently issued a further update (an updated subversion of version 10.14.3) that corrects the Group FaceTime flaw. Version 10.14.4 (now in beta) will add support for Touch ID-enabled Safari AutoFill and dark mode for websites that support it.

macOS vs. iOS

Apple is standing fast on its policy of keeping macOS separate from iOS. Microsoft, in contrast, uses the same version of Windows 10 for both desktops and tablets, and Google's Chrome OS lets users run Android Apps on the desktop, though the implementation isn't perfect. Despite its strict policy, though, Apple keeps adding iOS apps and features to macOS and vice versa. For example, Mojave brings four iOS apps—Stocks, News, Home, and Voice Memos—to the Mac.

Mojave is the first stage in Apple's plan to let third-party developers port their own iOS apps to the Mac; this feature will likely arrive in 2019. Meanwhile, some long-term macOS developers will have to scramble to update their old 32-bit apps before that 2019 version arrives, since Mojave is the last macOS version that will run 32-bit apps at all. Until that 2019 deadline, when you launch a 32-bit app for the first time under Mojave, you'll get a warning message (like the ones that began popping up when running a 32-bit app in High Sierra), but then the app will then run normally.

Will My Mac Run Mojave?

Mojave runs on any Mac that supports Apple's Metal graphic-acceleration framework, which means, in effect, any Mac desktop or laptop from mid-2012 or later. The only exception is the Mac Pro line: all models from late 2013 are supported, but 2010 and 2012 models require Metal-capable graphics cards. Like its predecessor, High Sierra, Mojave uses the new, efficient Apple File System (APFS) by default, and finally makes APFS compatible with the Fusion Drives in some desktop Macs—hard drives that use flash storage for a small part of the drive and spinning platters for the rest. (APFS has always been compatible with flash-only and platter-only drives.)

APFS adds reliability and speed, and you'll be especially grateful for it when you make a copy of a large file, an operation that seems to take forever in older file systems, including Windows' NTFS, but takes just a few seconds with APFS. For more on Apple's new file system, you can read our story on what APFS means to you.

If you want to try out Mojave before upgrading an existing High Sierra system, and you're using an APFS-formatted solid-state drive with at least 20GB of free space, you can use macOS' Disk Utility to create a separate, automatically resizable APFS "volume" on your existing disk and install Mojave on it without interfering with your High Sierra system. Forget everything you might remember about the inconvenience of partitioning and resizing hard disks in the pre-APFS era, because APFS does the job automatically and invisibly.

Getting Started With macOS Mojave

Mojave's initial installation is identical to previous versions, until you reach the new menu on which you choose between the familiar light display mode and the new Dark Mode—with thumbnail images of each. If you don't choose Dark Mode here, you can always switch to it later from the General pane in System Preferences. That said, you may never feel inclined to switch back after choosing the Dark Mode, since it's more restful to the eyes, makes text easier to read, and generally looks a lot cooler.

If you've edited photos in Apple's Photos app, you've had an advance taste of Dark Mode, because the edit mode in Photos uses a black background with white lettering, making it easier to see your image in its true colors. Mojave's Dark Mode uses the same effect in all apps supplied by Apple, including the ones built into macOS and separately downloaded ones like Xcode. Dark Mode also works with any other app that uses Apple's standard color schemes.

Every new macOS release strives to be more visually dazzling than the last. With Mojave, Apple came up with an especially splendid visual effect for the Mojave desktop. If you choose Light Mode instead of Dark Mode, the default image of the Mojave Desert in the desktop background changes over the course of the day—with different images for dawn, midday, sunset, and night. It looks cool, but some may find it distracting. Furthermore, Apple hasn't revealed the image-changing mechanisms to third-party developers who might want to create their own time-of-day-responsive desktops, though it's only a matter of time before someone figures out the secret.

I've complained for years about the blindingly bright blue folder icons in macOS; they're still blinding in Light Mode, but Dark Mode adds some gray shading to the folder icons so they're a lot less distracting.

How Does Mojave Stack Up?

The other new desktop feature, Stacks (accessible via the Finder menu), gathers all the random icons on your desktop into a few neat stacks at the right edge of the screen and organizes everything into categories such as documents and images. You don't need to expand a stack to see what's in it—just use a two-finger swipe on the trackpad to make each icon in a stack appear in turn at the top. A submenu lets you organize stacks by date rather than by kind, so you can have stacks of files labeled Today or Yesterday.

This feature is available only on the desktop, so it won't work in a Finder window. Furthermore, Stacks lacks some customization options. For example, shortcuts to apps, Zip archives, and other miscellaneous icons get grouped by default in a Stack called Other. If you want customized stacks with unique names, you need to use the Finder's Tag feature to organize a set of items, then choose the option to group stacks by tags.

Finder Finesse

The Finder gets its own visual overhaul to match today's high-resolution monitors. The Finder's old CopyFlow view is gone, replaced by a spacious Gallery view that displays large-scale preview images, with relevant metadata listed in a sidebar on the right. The sidebar includes a menu for functions like rotating or marking up images, so you can perform many tasks directly from the Finder, without opening files in another application.

Until Mojave, macOS had a full-featured screen-capture tool called Grab, but if you wanted a quick screenshot on a Mac—the equivalent of holding the top or side button and clicking Home on an iPhone—you were limited to two key-combinations: Shift-Cmd-3 for full-screen and Shift-Cmd-4 to capture a window or draw a rectangle for capturing. Mojave adds a Shift-Cmd-5 shortcut, which opens a toolbar with all three options available, plus a new option to record a video of the entire screen or a rectangular selection. The old Grab tool is gone, but a new ScreenShot app displays all the new options if you don't remember the keyboard shortcut.

Even better, when you take any screenshot, a thumbnail opens on the lower right corner of the screen, and a context menu lets you save the screenshot to the desktop (the default), or your Documents folder, or clipboard. Alternatively, you can open the screenshot in Mail, Messages, Preview, or Photos, or mark it up on the spot. The one missing feature is an option to save the screenshot with a descriptive name, instead of the automatically applied generic name that includes the date and time, which you always change anyway.

Privacy and Security in Mojave

Beneath its dazzling surface, Mojave makes important, but invisible, advances in privacy and security. Safari, for example, makes it harder than ever for advertisers to track you. Apple points out that if you are logged in to a social media site, Facebook-style Like and Comment buttons can track you everywhere online, even if you don't click on them. On Mojave, Safari blocks that tracking. If you click on one of those buttons, Safari asks your permission before it transmits your response. Mojave also anonymizes the system information (like your screen size and installed fonts) that many web-tracking sites request from your browser so that they can "fingerprint" your system and send targeted ads. All this makes the web a lot less creepy.

Mojave can also function as a password manager. The new OS automatically creates and stores strong passwords when you use Safari to sign up to a website—no more "12345" unless you insist on it. (You shouldn't.) For sites that send one-time passcodes via text message when you try to sign in, Safari automatically plugs them in as AutoFill suggestions, reducing confusion and errors when your non-technical relatives try to type in the SMS number of the remote site instead of the password.

In Safari's Passwords preference pane, alert buttons appear next to passwords you've used on more than one site, and if you click on the alert, a button prompts you to change the password—and offers to take you directly to the site's password change page. This feature alerted me to a few passwords that I had used twice, and gave me a link to a page where I could change the password.

Mojave also tightens security in thousands of third-party AppleScript apps that use Finder and other internal macOS features to automate complex procedures. These AppleScript apps still run in the same way they did before, but the first time you run them under Mojave, macOS asks permission to let the apps access these features. If you click OK, the system won't ask again. The slight inconvenience is worth the added security, but, inevitably, some users will think that their apps are doing something new—instead of getting permission to do what they've always done—and those users may refuse permission, and then wonder why their app isn't working. Fortunately, the same app asks again the next time you run it, and you can click OK once and for all.

Improved Continuity

With every new OS release, Apple tightens its ecosystem to make the Mac work more closely with mobile hardware, and Mojave is no exception. My favorite new feature is Continuity Camera. When you're working in a document or message on your Mac and want to insert a photograph or scanned document, simply Ctrl-click in the document. The resultant pop-up menu includes a Take Photo option, which lets you snap a picture on your mobile device, or Scan Documents, which straightens and crops a photo that you take of a receipt or similar document. Take the photo on your phone; click a "Use Photo" item that appears below the image, and the picture pops instantly into your document.

The four apps imported from iOS—News, Stocks, Voice Memos, and Home—look like more spacious versions of their iOS counterparts and translate well to the desktop. The Home app is a lot easier to manage on a desktop screen than a cramped phone display. The News app automatically recognizes newspaper sites that you've signed in to via Safari, and displays subscription-only content without making you sign in again. None of these apps looks entirely macOS-like, but that will only bother purists. What bothers me slightly are the large-type headers like "Top Stories" that waste real-estate on screen instead of using subtler visual features to distinguish between top stories and lesser ones. Apple will sort out these design issues sooner or later. Meanwhile, I'm glad to have all these apps, and they've already reduced my temptation to grab my phone when I should be working.

The New macOS App Store

When Apple excitedly announced a makeover for the App Store, I hid my yawn behind my hand—only to find that the makeover mostly justifies the hype. The new store has a spacious layout with plenty of detail about individual apps and, if the developer provides them, video previews and detailed background information. In previous versions, you could Ctrl-click on your purchased apps and pop up a menu with an option to hide your purchase. Mojave replaces this with a three-dot icon that appears when you hover the listing for the app. Click on the icon and a menu pops up where you can hide the purchase or send a link to it via Messages, Mail and more. One long-standing annoyance still hasn't been fixed: the list of your purchased products is still sorted in reverse chronological order, with no option to sort it any other way.

Both Windows 10 and Ubuntu feature growing and evolving app stores, so it's important that Apple continues to innovate in this area.

Group FaceTime

The new Group FaceTime feature lets you send out invitations for a video or audio chat with up to 32 people at the same time. They can connect via a Mac or an iOS device or (with audio only) an Apple Watch. Your Mac or phone automatically shows a larger image of the person currently speaking, with the others in displayed as smaller images in the FaceTime window. Apple's publicity screenshot shows a dozen deliriously happy teenagers grinning at each other while they chat, but grinning presumably won't be required in the released version. As mentioned earlier, this feature initially contained a glitch that allowed people to hear you if they added you to a group call, even if you didn't accept the call. Thankfully, an update has fixed the issue.

When to Upgrade

Every initial (point-zero) release of macOS has some glitches that get sorted out in later updates. Early in the beta period, I used my Apple Developer account to report bugs in two deeply obscure macOS features, which I use in a few Applescript apps that I've written over the years. (If you must know, the two features are PostScript-to-PDF command-line conversion and file access through a background program called a launch daemon.) These were low-priority issues, but Apple fixed them promptly and completely, which is a lot better than my experience when reporting bugs to some other major software vendors.

It's my policy not to upgrade right away when a new macOS version is released. There are bound to be birthing pains; some apps won't behave correctly under the new OS, and glitches invariably pop up. I already mentioned the Group FaceTime flaw; a more recent and potentially more serious bug has emerged that can expose Keychain Passwords. Apple has yet to issue a fix for it.

Testing the release version of Mojave on a 2017 MacBook Pro, I experienced only one minor hiccup that fixed itself when I restarted the machine. I was testing the Continuity Camera feature that lets you take a photo with your camera and insert it into an app like Pages. When I clicked Take Photo from the pop-up menu in Pages, a dialog box told me that I needed to enable two-factor authentication for this Mac, and offered to take me to the iCloud Settings to enable it.

When I clicked on the Continue button, I was taken to the iCloud Settings, but not directly to the Security tab, which means that non-expert users will be thoroughly confused by what to do next. Then, when I opened the Security tab, it showed that two-factor authentication was already enabled, so the original error message made no sense at all. After a reboot the problem disappeared.

An Enviable OS

No one's going to choose between macOS and Windows 10 by comparing features (your hardware usually determines your OS), but Mojave should give the Mac faithful plenty of reasons to be glad they chose Apple. Mojave's elegance and convenience might even tempt some among the Windows users, especially those who are also iPhone users.

I use both macOS and Windows every day; Windows for work and the Mac for pleasure. Some of the apps I rely on are better on Windows—for example, the unmatched ABBYY FineReader Pro app (for OCR and PDF editing) and Microsoft Office (with its richer set of Windows-based keyboard shortcuts). I admire both systems, but I reach for my Mac when I have a choice. Mojave makes the decision even easier.